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Cast:
Jordan Ladd as Madeline Matheson
Gabrielle Rose as Vivian Matheson
Samantha Ferris as Dr. Patricia Lang
Malcolm Stewart as Dr. Richard Sohn
Stephen Park as Michael Matheson
Serge Houde as Henry Matheson
Directed by Paul Solet
Review:
This is a film that could have gone to the extremes of Larry Cohen’s wonderful It’s Alive series of killer baby films. But instead, writer/director Paul Solet crafts (surprise surprise) a very old-fashioned slow-burn horror movie about a new mother’s life with a blood-thirsty baby. This is not a horror movie by today’s standards; it’s like how horror movies used to be. You know how people are always saying that, well here you are. Think Rosemary’s Baby by way of Repulsion (two Polanski classics) and you’ll have a good idea how this refreshingly original movie plays out.
This effectively subtle movie really starts with a car crash. Before that we meet Madeline (played by the lovely Jordan Ladd of Cabin Fever) and her husband Michael. They are expecting their first child (well, technically it’s their second – they lost the first one) and are busy trying to figure out who their doctor will be. They decide to go with a Patricia (played by Samantha Ferris from the underrated show The 4400), a midwife/doctor who Madeline had a lesbian affair with at one time in college. Now that we are caught up, back to that car crash. The crash kills Michael and leaves Madeline injured. She is rushed to Patricia’s hospital/birthing lab place and we find out that the fetus has most certainly been killed by the impact. Madeline, unable to let go of her baby, decides to carry it to full term and delivery naturally. Apparently, this is something that actually does occur in real life, according to Solet, and was not his invention.
Three or four weeks later the baby is delivered still-born, and Patricia and her nurses give Madeline some time alone with her dead infant. If you are a parent, this scene will literally break your heart. I have a 1 year old and I will never forget her birth, which makes this scene painfully sad but dramatically wonderful for the story. Madeline pleads with her dead baby to return to life and even tries to breast-feed it. Patricia walks back in to tell her she cannot will the dead back to life when she notices that the baby is indeed suckling at the breast lustily. Madeline turns to us, the audience, and introduces us to Grace.
The second act of the film is noticeably slower. Here we get an up close look at the early days of the baby at home. Madeline starts to loose her mind from lack of sleep as her life becomes feed the baby, rock the baby, feed the baby, soothe the baby, feed the baby, etc., etc. Sooner than later, strange things start to happen to her miracle baby. Grace gives off an awful smell that attracts flies by the hundreds. Water and soap give her blisters. And breast milk isn’t giving her the nutrition she really craves. Somehow the baby finds away to draw blood from Madeline’s nipple and after a few bloody bras, she realizes that her baby craves something redder than milk.
She heads to a grocery store and passes a store employee advertising a new meat product (producer Adam Green, Frozen, in a cameo). She notices the bloody meat in the packaging and buys a boatload of the red beef. When she gets home she funnels the excess cattle blood into a baby bottle. She sets the baby up in a high chair (which it would be too young for, since an infant can’t hold its head up until it is 3 or 4 months old and I don’t think that much time elapsed) to drink the blood-filled bottle while she dumps the meat into a trash bag to throw into the garbage. The heavy-handed irony of the film is that Madeline is a vegan, but her baby is anything but. She returns to find the baby in the throes of a seizure and then it promptly vomits blood at her.
She doesn’t want to take Grace to a hospital for some unknown reason (maybe she doesn’t want them to find out she’s some kind of baby ghoul, although she looks quite healthy and chubby) so she contacts Patricia for help. Patricia, realizing how much she cared for Madeline tries to rekindle the affair, but is blown off. She spends most of the movie pinning for the young mother and sitting in a car outside of her house, trying to catch a glimpse of her. She is not aware that Madeline is trying to reach her because she is being kept apart by Patricia’s bratty assistant who is feeling fiercely jealous and wants to keep them apart.
In the meantime, we get to know Michael’s mom and Grace’s estranged grandmother, Vivian (played by Gabrielle Rose, who played Aunt Jillian in the excellent Lost Boys 2: The Tribe…just kidding about that last part). She was a monster to Madeline while Michael was alive, but with her son dead and access to her granddaughter cut off, she starts to lose her mind. She doesn’t simply miss her son but for some reason wants to start breast-feeding again. She pops out a booby and makes her husband suck on it, but when that doesn’t thrill her, she digs out her old breast pump (and I mean this things has got to be OLD) and starts pumping away at herself. She impossibly starts to draw milk from her breast, which I think is a scientific impossibility if you aren’t pregnant or nursing. In any case, she does it. What happens to it, we don’t know, but I sure hope her husband likes cereal.
In the end, these fractured characters come together in an explosive finale. The reason the third act is so shocking is because the middle portion of the film slows things down considerably, so that when violence erupts, it really cuts deep. Madeline really loves her baby and will do anything for her. Patricia really loves Madeline and will do anything for her. Vivian really loves breast-feeding and the memory of her son, so she will do anything to get Grace away from Madeline. In the end, the film comes to a logical conclusion that leaves a few dead bodies in its wake, and the audience wanting more.
As a parent of a small child that just finished breast-feeding, this was an extremely difficult movie to watch. Ladd’s character comes off as selfish and incredibly stupid when it comes to taking care of a baby. Here are a few tips for all you future parents out there. If your baby gets bloody rashes in the bathtub, take it to the hospital. If your baby vomits blood and has seizures, take it to the hospital. Hell, if the baby is drinking blood, take it to hospital! However, if that had happened there probably wouldn’t be a movie, and I understand that, but I found it frustrating from a parental standpoint.
I cannot stress enough that this is a subtle film experience (almost Kubrick-like, but not as intense). If you expect to see the baby jumping around and biting people on the neck, you will be disappointed. If you expect to see a woman realistically deal with a baby who needs special food, you will be satisfied. If you expect to see blood and gore sprayed around the walls of the nursery while the baby chows down on some intestines with a music box playing in the background, you will be disappointed. If you expect to see a slow-paced, character study of a young mother and her sickly baby, you will be satisfied.
Don’t let this scare you off because the film is worth watching. It is well-made but challenging to watch, which makes it interesting. Many will be put off by the old-fashioned pace, but there are enough shocks and weirdo moments sprinkled throughout to keep you interested. I was impressed by Solet’s courage to make a different kind of film, and this plus Ladd’s subdued but authentic performance make the film a stunning achievement for modern horror films.
